I’m loving this app but there’s much improvements to be made. The media insert still not working after the latest update on Wednesday. Turning pages is a real pain, you cannot just swipe for next page, instead you have to hit that top left or right page corner, now this is lame. Some of the lag problem been tackled in the latest update but still traces of screen lock up here and there. For us in Asia, the worst part is that the app does not support Chinese nor Japanese input , real bummer (well, emoticons work at least, LOL).

Is it that bad? well, the app has real potential but I suspect it require much horsepower to get this app running. On the new iPad, it seems ok, more laggy on the iPad 2, for the iPad 1, well….don’t even think about it.

I hope the developers can work out the problem fast cause this app is getting a lot of attention for its innovative interface but at the same time, bad vibes for its problems.

Philip Bloom reviewed the latest Canon 5D MKIII and did a video (embedded above) review on it as well. The review can be found on his blog, link here, and he will continue to update it as he gets more familiar with the camera. Check out and see what the master has to say.

The new models, DEV-3 and DEV-5, are ideal for nature/bird watching, they can record Full HD video with stereo sound at the touch of a button, and even add a 3D mode that records scenes as thrilling stereoscopic video footage for playback on most 3D HDTVs. The new DEV-3 and DEV-5 digital recordable binoculars from Sony will be available in November 2011 for about $1400 and $2000. Apart from the video review, you can find a write-up over at photoclubalpha. Press Release after the jump.

For those who loves shooting and sharing their pictures using Instagram on their iPhone, don’t you just wish that you can view your feeds on your Mac. Well, the guys over at Mobelux have come up with an Instagram client for the Mac, the Carousel.

The app is not on the App Store yet but for now, you can buy it for half the introductory price of US$4.99 on their website. The app features allows one to

view their Feed, Popular and Profile photos with a choice of app themes;

follow and explore users, like, comment, moderate comments, and more;

use keyboard shortcuts to quickly traverse your feed, like, comment, and more; and

drag & drop to save full-size photos to your Mac, or iPhoto.

Check it out now, with all the hype with the Instagram app, this is must-have extension to it. The interface is slick and simple. Highly recommend.

Ever want to share a file or a picture with your friends instantly? In the past, I used to upload whatever files or pictures I want to share with my buddies to Dropbox or SugarSync and then share it. It is a bit cumbersome as I have to first upload and then share it. Although I have quite a bit of storage on both my Dropbox and SugarSync account, but the files or pictures might not be something that I want to store. That’s quite a bit of a problem as that creates a housekeeping chore, that is, I have to remember to go back and delete all those unwanted files.

In come CloudApp (or “Cloud” in the Mac App Store), a free file and link sharing app available on the Mac App Store last week. The app itself been around for some time and this new version 1.5 is a gorgeous makeover which features a chic yet simple interface.

The application, once installed, sits on the menu bar. You can drag any files or picture to it and it will copy the link to whatever you dragged to your clipboard and you can instantly paste it in Twitter, Facebook or email. The uploaded file resides in your CloudApp webpage and another neat thing is there’s a view counter to each of the linked files, great for those stats lover.

The CloudApp also features plugins called Raindrops allowing you to share using CloudApp without leaving your favorite Mac apps. There’s a Raindrop to share pictures from iPhoto, bookmark the page in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, the canvas you’re working on in Photoshop, automatically upload screenshots, upload selected iTunes tracks and many more.

To get your free copy of the CloudApp, hop over to the Mac App Store or check them out at he website, http://getcloudapp.com/.

DODOcase just launched a whole line of DODOcase for iPad 2 but I’m interested in is the back cover on the iPad 2 they have, called the BOOKback, which protects the backside of the iPad 2 as well as the iPhone 4. Take a look at the above video from the guys over at the iphoneblog. It is pretty much the same as the GelaSkins I reviewed a while ago, Very easy to apply and I bet those are 3M adhesive as well, meaning they can be taken off and reapply fairly easily. Judging by the looks of the BOOKback in the video, it sure looks neat. Pricing on the BOOKback, US$19.95 for the iPad 2 and US$8.95 for the iPhone 4.

For those who write quite often, no matter whether you’re a student, housewife, screenwriter, poet or author, a good writing tool is definitely something that you should not overlook.

Be it a school essay, a thesis paper, a poem, a report, a script, a book or as minute as a household recipe, this application Scrivener just might be the perfect tool.

According to Scrivener, “Scrivener puts everything you need for structuring, writing and editing long documents at your fingertips. On the left of the window, the “binder” allows you to navigate between the different parts of your manuscript, your notes, and research materials, with ease. Break your text into pieces as small or large as you want – so you can forget wrestling with one long document. Restructuring your draft is as simple as drag and drop. Select a single document to edit a section of your manuscript in isolation, or use “Scrivenings” mode to work on multiple sections as though they were one: Scrivener makes it easy to switch between focussing on the details and stepping back to get a wider view of your composition.

For those of you who are planning on getting an iPad 2 together with the Smart Cover, or who have already done so, one piece of advice….. get your ass (iPad 2) covered. You definitely don’t want to have the back side wide open as you can get all the scratches on it, especially with the Apple logo (a big no no if you’re planning on selling it in the future).

In come GelaSkins, the company that specializes removable covers for portable devices. Their skins features stunning and photo-quality graphics ranging from fine art prints to contemporary urban images. GelaSkins in fact is one of the few companies that have the whole product line ready before the iPad2 was launched. Over 100 stock artworks are available or even best, use your own photo or art for the skins. For now, GelaSkins only have the front and back cover set (US$29.95), and that comes with a wallpaper to match the artwork you choose. For the iPad 2 back cover only, they do have the section up but no stock artwork yet, meaning one can only use their own photo or art.

UPS arrived this morning

GelaSkins for my iPad2

I ordered mine last week for my iPad 2. Got the Charity: Water Logo on Black and Love Letters artworks and received them today. The whole process of applying the skin to the iPad 2 took 5 minutes or so. For now I’m leaving the front skins and the wall paper as I’m just using the black leather Smart Cover. One thing I do notice while applying the skins is that one can easily pull the skins off and use another one, just stick it back to the sheet that it came with. Thanks for the 3M technology GelaSkins uses.

Now for a limited time, you get one free skins if you order three from GelaSkins.

To let you get a better idea of how the GelaSkins work and look, I’ve linked this great video from metagamers below.

Last week, I was asked to test drive the all new SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash Card, thanks to the guys at TEXT100 HKG (great PR firm in Hong Kong). As an amateur photographer, by no means would I pass on checking out how fast this new memory card claims, that being 90MB/sec.

Well, I put it up for some home-made testing of mine to check it out. I conducted a few read and write tests and I used the older generation SanDisk Extreme IV and the SanDisk Extreme FireWire Reader to benchmark the results.

For each full frame pic I take on my Sony A900, the size of the RAW file is around 37.6MB. I switched the shooting mode to burst mode and took 10 pictures in a roll. The average writing speed after 10 trials are as follow –

SanDisk Extreme IV 16GB – 11.9 sec

SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB – 9.4 sec

Not bad for writing speed. In fact, this new Extreme Pro is whopping fast. Given the price and the storage size (64GB being the highest), it is the ultimate dream card when it comes to taking large picture file size and large video files.

Next up I tried out the read and writing time in copying 342 picture files (11.9GB) to and from my computer and the results are as follow –

SanDisk Extreme IV 16GB

writing to card – 13 minutes 6 seconds

reading from card and copying to PC – 7 minutes 16 seconds

SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB

writing to card – 12 minutes 48 seconds

reading from card and copying to PC – 8 minutes 14 seconds

Looking at the read and write tests results, one might ask shouldn’t the more expensive Extreme Pro be a lot faster than the old Extreme IV? The answer is yes, the faster Extreme Pro do read and write faster but in order to see the results, it does depends on what kind of card reader you are using. SanDisk can roll out even more faster cards but they do need a fast reader as well. The 45MB/s FireWire Reader from SanDisk surely cannot catch up anymore.

SanDisk, hope you dig this.

One of my reader, David Golden, sent me an email pointing out the the card performance is most likely optimized for high performance burst mode as your statistics indicate. The sustained write performance (copying 12 GB of data to the card) is not nearly as important. Thanks David for your input.

Web Wednesday – Hong Kong
Tidbits of news about the Internet and digital media in Hong Kong. Brought to life by a lively monthly networking event, held at Lotus Restaurant & Cocktail Bar in central Hong Kong on the first Wednesday of every month. Do pop along to the next event